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St. Joan and Judas

September 10, 2008

Joan Baez’s new album, “Day After Tomorrow,” was released the day before tomorrow, and it’s gotten generally positive reviews, both here and elsewhere. It features the veteran folksinger and her famed voice, which age has worn into a more comfortable thing, in collaboration with Steve Earle, who produced the album and contributed three songs. Baez recently discussed politics with the London Times, and how her early suspicion of the current administration initially alienated audiences but gradually became more acceptable:

Little by little it became clear that Bush was bizarre—and dangerous. I would do concerts where I would see people in the audience sitting with their arms crossed, looking angry as I said: “I was right 40 years ago and I am right now!” and throw my fist in the air. Now they’re listening. Bush’s great trick is to suggest that to go against him is to be unpatriotic. Slowly people realised that.

Baez, of course, is known mostly as an interpreter; she wrote few of the songs she made hits, and even tells the Times “I’ve never really been a songwriter.” But one of the songs she did write is the source of one of rock and roll’s strangest cover versions. “Diamonds and Rust,” her mid-seventies memoir-ballad about her early-sixties relationship with Bob Dylan, was covered by the British heavy-metal band Judas Priest on its 1977 album “Sin After Sin.” The oddness of the choice—leather-and-studs does “Diamonds and Rust”—cannot be overstated, and yet the song became a staple of the band’s live sets, including the 1982 performance below.